Blood Rage (Core Box) | Strategy Game | Viking Fantasy Board Game | Tabletop Miniatures Battle Game for Adults and Teens | Ages 14+ | 2-4 Players | Avg. Playtime 60-90 Mins | Made by CMON

This is a great game for a small group. The components in this game are amazing, high quality and contain a lot of detail. If you like miniature games and/or enjoy painting these are perfect for you (this is not required by any means, but would make the figures that much better).PROS:+The game runs pretty quick, I would say around 45 minutes after the first play through, which is nice as you can play multiple times during one gathering.+As stated above the game has incredible miniatures, and has some good bases to snap on the bottom to easily identify what components are yours and your enemies.+2-4(or 5 with expansion Blood Rage 5th Player Expansion- Multi-lingual Game) The range is nice and the number of players really changes the game strategy, so playing with 2 feels much different than playing with 4. However the rules stay mostly the same (the card drafting changes very slightly)+Each game is different board to play on, there are different areas that are destroyed depending on the number of players and they change every game. There are different pillage tokens that are placed randomly on the board each game. Finally in the game there are 3 different areas that are destroyed after each age. All of these rules help to make the game-board different every game and keep it fresh and repayable.+The drafting of the cards in this game is outstanding, this is a great mechanic to play the game. This removes the need for rolling dice or drawing a random card, for the most part everyone has a chance and you need to decide what is best for you before you pass the reaming cards to the next person.+Finally one great part of the game is playing cards to aid in a battle (which by game design, you do not always want to win) these are played down and reveled all at the same time and it allows for some heavy strategy and bluffing in the game.CONS:-Even though the miniatures are very nice and are a natural base color (probably for painting) it would have been nice if they would have distinguished each different type of figure with a slightly different color base color, it is sometimes hard to remember who is the warrior, leader, monster ect....-The game goes quick which is nice, however it seems like by the end of round 3 (the last round) you could really enjoy playing for another round or two as you finally have some good combinations set up with units and upgrades.Overall this is a well designed game with great components and plays quick. I would say it is an easy game to play but a good amount of strategy is needed to win. Below are a few pictures of some of the figures (not painted) right out of the box.

A must own game for a wide range of board game fans. This is so much fun, you have to try it for yourself. It looks like it is super complex, but it really isnt. It is a very open ended game with many different ways to approach gameplay, and many ways to win. Being that gameplay is won by glory (points), purely conquering land doesn't mean anything. There is alot of strategy involved with picking cards, fulfilling quests, invading countries, etc.Pros:- Amazingly fun- Doent take long to learn- Multiple ways to approach and win- High quality materials- Figurines (especially monsters) are amazingly detailed and spectacular looking- Despite the name, it is family friendly (even though young children would probably not understand the strategy part of it. Pre-teens and older should have no issues with that)- Games are fairly quick. Newbies can take 2-3 hours. For people who know the game, it can take 1-2 hours.Cons:- Getting everything setup can take a little while. Though it isn't going to take an hour, it does typically take 10 minutes or so, for one person to do it.- Although the packaging fits back in the box well, putting the figurines away can take a while. There is no markings as to which goes where, and they only fit into one place. So putting 40+ figurines into the correct locations takes a while- Some of the figures with spears or long weapons can be bent alittle when they arrive. Not a huge negative. But just a little annoying.

I'd give this game 4.5 stars if I could, primarily because I find myself comparing it to Forbidden Stars, preferring the latter. The reason I compare them: both are very thematic games that favor four players and hyper-aggressive strategies, so they scratch a similar itch. Also, they came out around the same time.However, don't necessarily listen to me, because most of the people I game with prefer Blood Rage. And I have to admit that Blood Rage has a lot of things going for it. First of all, the rules are very simple, and it doesn't pull that card game trick where the complicated rules are embedded in the core cards. It's not hard to teach this game; it takes about fifteen minutes to explain to a bunch of relatively experienced board gamers, or twice that for more casual players.Also, as anyone will tell you, Blood Rage is gorgeous. The miniatures manage to impress both casual players and people who take minis seriously (I'm closer to the first group). These are pliable plastic game pieces, unpainted, with minimal assembly required for some of the larger figures. They are extremely detailed but too flexible to readily snap off the smaller parts. The designs are very pretty, highly thematic renditions of Viking warriors and their mythological creatures. These are more cinematic than realistic, and there is a slight cartoonishness to some of them - not necessarily in a bad way. Just don't expect historically accurate heraldry.The board, cards and other tokens are perfectly fine; relatively durable and functional, decent looking pieces. Functional and pleasant enough. But it's obvious that all the visual awesomeness was invested in the miniatures.The rules are solid. Players who enjoy thematic elements may be disappointed to find out that there are no differences between any of the factions, at least at the start of the game. This is a minor quibble, and it keeps things simple and easier to balance. Gameplay can be very swingy, especially before you anticipate the strategic importance of certain cards, and how that plays into your tactics in the draft. But there are no dice, or strictly random elements, so more experience players are going to see more stable games. And big swings can be exciting for novices, especially when you take the whole Ragnarok theme into account.Basically, this game is fun, and it's not hard to convince people to play it. When I mention Forbidden Stars, my more casual friends groan, reminding me that it's going to take two weeks, at least, to finish a game. It's worth it, at least for me. But I don't have any problem compromising on Blood Rage. After all, I'm giving it five stars.